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I am only in my first week of college and as part of my course i've been told i need to give a small personal presentation to the rest of class around about November time. Now all week it hasn't left my mind and i just keep worrying and thinking about it. I just can't imagine i could do something like this. It is probably the worst thing i have ever dreaded in my life......
Anyone been in this position before? did you get through it? Any advice?
I couldnt do it!! I can only suggest that you write it up asap, learn it and re-learn it, so the only issue you will have will be the public speaking part. You'll hopefully have ensured you know it back to front by then so are unlilkely to forget anything, which would make the experience worse.
If you explain to your tutor that you suffer with anxiety I am sure they will make other arrangements. I work in a school and we have students who are very shy/anxious and when it comes to giving a presentation we allow them to do it with 1 member of staff and maybe one of their close friends.
I would fins this just too much BUT, I would at the very least give it a try
I would speak to the teacher and tell them your issues but that you want to try to do it
Make arrangements to have a back-up speaker just in case at the last moment you can not do it
At least you will have tried
Better to try and fail than quit
I hate giving presentations (mainly because I get scared that I'll stutter or stumble over my words), but I think I've got more confident over the years. I've been through college, university and work and there have been several times where I've had to do presentations.
Is it a Powerpoint presentation or is one where you just stand up on your own and speak? If it's a Powerpoint presentation, I use the slides to guide me through the speech, if not then I make some small notecards and put bulletpoints for what I want to say. I always make sure I rehearse the presentation at least twice, so I get used to the structure and flow of it, and I try and memorise as many of the words as possible so that I don't have to refer to my notes too much.
When I finish giving a presentation, I usually find that it's gone better than I thought it would. The most important thing is to be well prepared.
Good luck with it! :)
First of all take a deep breath.....you have lots of time to prepare for this and I am 100% sure that when your class learned about the presentations, about 90% of them instantly started to panic. I really think that you need to take the bull by the horns here, prepare, give it your best shot and keep thinking how proud of yourself you are going to be when you do this. I bet that it will be way better than you imagine and you really won't be the only nervous person there, I am sure that everyone will be relieved to get their presentation over and done with
Yeah I'd experience it too, I guess any other school do something like that kind of stuff and I don't really like it when am forced to something that I wouldn't wanna do. But what can I do even if I appeal they just say that it's unfair to other student who participated. :(
Prepare, prepare, prepare
One of the worst things I found about giving presentations at School or Work was the thought that all eyes would be on me.
I decided that the way to ease this anxiety was to distract the audience away from me, so if you can give a presentation with OHP or projector with Powerpoint, you can stand off to one side, turn and face the screen yourself and continue in the knowledge that not everybody is looking at you, but concentrating on the screen. It also lowers the formality of the presentation in a strange way. Familiarise yourself with the room layout. Move things about if you don't like them in a certain position. Find out where the audience are going to be.
Prepare.
If it's a situation where OHP / projector is not available, then I would heed the advice that others have given. Know your subject backwards, upside down and sideways so that the anxiety of remembering what to say is diminished.
I personally don't believe that everyone has the natural ability to give presentations and engage an audience, which is why, at work many years ago, when it was forced upon us and there were other people in the room who clearly were more knowledgable than the speaker, it felt very false, pointless and slightly humiliating.
Owning up to anxiety is a very big step so why not just say to your audience, "Please bear with me, this is my first experience doing this and I'm extremely nervous".
I was in a presentation once where the speaker was very nervous, shaking, trembling and sweating. Once he said those words above, the audience were no longer uptight on his behalf and he visibly calmed down. He got a great round of applause at the end, which I think made a huge difference.
Stuart.
Yup, have had and still have to do these all the time. Always incredibly nervous. The best way to get through it is to be ultra well-prepared and know your stuff. Practice saying it out loud lots and time yourself.
It goes soo quick and everyone else will be nervous too. When it's finished you'll wonder what you were worried about!
Good luck! x
Jokrok, I'm not sure you'll get a response - the last post in this thread was nearly seven years ago.
If you can start off with something that makes the audience laugh, it will become much easier.
I'd actually tell the rest of the class that you're scared shirtless so please excuse any stutterings or memory loss. That will pretty much resonate with everyone.
All eyes upon you? Probably for the first few seconds then other students will doze off or start thinking about their own presentations.
I hate teachers who make students do presentations. They are lazy barstewards who don't have to teach anything. Money for old ripe
I had to give a presentation at University. Also had to give a presentation to about 500 school teachers from my city during a youth conference back when I was a youth worker. I had to also teach them to rap :roflmao:
The bark is worse than the bite. Once you're up there you fall into place. It's hard to explain. When you're on the spot you seem to just adapt. It's tough, but it's a valuable life lesson and a positive in terms of anxiety.